Updated August 20, 2024 at 17:26 PM ET
Throughout the week, high-profile Republicans will address the convention, among them former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger; Olivia Troye, a former Trump White House national security official; and Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary and aide to former first lady Melania Trump.
Grisham will speak Tuesday evening, as will a onetime Trump supporter who supported former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley's presidential primary campaign.
Kyle Sweetser, a group of the Haley Voters Working Group from Alabama, says he voted for Trump in the 2016 primary and in the 2016 and 2020 general elections, but had gradually become disillusioned with Trump on a variety of issues, including his rhetoric on immigration and race and his economic policies.
"I held my nose to vote for him in the general election the second time, and I assumed that it was over after that," Sweetser said in an interview with NPR. "I assumed he would go away, but he never went away."
Sweetser backed Haley in the 2024 primary, but says he decided he would not vote for Trump again. He says he will make a brief convention speech focused mostly on economic policy issues.
"I feel like there's this huge group of people that are reachable," he said.
The convention also will feature what the Harris campaign describes as “everyday Republican voices” discussing their support for Harris.
Harris' campaign has been actively courting current and former Republican voters for months, trying to persuade them to support the Democratic ticket even if they don’t agree with all of the party’s policy positions. In June, several weeks before President Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris, the campaign hired Kinzinger's former chief of staff to focus on Republican outreach.
Among the speakers at the Democratic National Convention on Monday was Rich Logis, a conservative commentator from Florida who describes himself as an “ex-MAGA activist” and now leads a group for former Trump supporters like himself.
In a video broadcast at the convention Monday, Logis told his story of breaking with former President Donald Trump about two years ago. He said Trump failed to provide “leadership” during the COVID pandemic.
"So this is my message to all the Republicans and independents who are watching people like me voted for believed in Trump. I made a grave mistake, but it's never too late to change your mind," he said. "You don't need to agree with everything you hear tonight to do what is right."
Logis represents the kind of major pivot on Trump that Democrats are hoping to see more Republicans and conservative-leaning independents make by November. Several years ago, in videos posted on YouTube — most of which had no more than a couple of dozen views — Logis was calling out Republicans he saw as disloyal to the party for criticizing Trump.
In a profile in the Tampa Bay Times earlier this year, Logis described developing a seemingly obsessive focus on Trump before ultimately becoming disillusioned with the former president and the MAGA movement over issues including the response of many Republicans — including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — to the pandemic.
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